


c'est la mort

by perennial



Series: Prairie Tales [1]
Category: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, La Belle et la Bête | Beauty and the Beast
Genre: F/M, Fairy Tale Retellings, Mental Illness, Racism, bipolar character, outcasts, real world AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-10
Updated: 2015-01-10
Packaged: 2018-03-07 00:34:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3154208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perennial/pseuds/perennial
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A destitute French coureur de bois and his daughter encounter an Osage warrior, who has problems of his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	c'est la mort

**Author's Note:**

> I often wonder about people who lived before the advent of modern medicine, especially since illnesses that were once guaranteed to kill someone are now dealt with as a matter of course (chicken pox, whooping cough) and conditions that were 'solved' by locking people away now have names and treatments and, if not total understanding, familiarity and acceptance in today's society. What did it look like hundreds of years ago when no one knew about chemical imbalance in the brain? What did it look like if someone was schizophrenic or autistic or bipolar? That was my starting point for this story. I have no personal experience with bipolar disorder, so I apologize if I've missed the mark in my depiction.
> 
> This is told from the perspective of one character and the racism present is a learned bias that eventually changes. Violent racism is displayed by a group and plays out offscreen.

A canoe is coming down the river. It is the only noticeable movement; everything else—beasts, birds, insects—has taken shelter from the now-ended rainfall, a drizzle that was too light to increase the speed of the river but was enough to irritate, flicking into eyes and making everything damp.

This stretch of the river is not wide, and trees bend their sodden branches over it in what may be either a protective shelter or watchful malevolence. The glory of autumn color has been muted by the rain. Drops slide off pine boughs and down the necks of the passing travelers.

The canoe is overloaded. Oil tarps have been thrown over the mound of trading paraphernalia in the back and wrapped with care around a sizeable collection of pelts. Barrels and waterproof packages bob along behind it, strung together in a line like a kitestring. It is a sturdy boat, fashioned from birch wood, but one must wonder how they navigate even the mildest rapids.

A man sits in the bow. He is just past middle-age, with black hair and black eyes and skin still darkened beyond its usual swarthiness by the now-departed summer sun. The quiet of the woods and water is broken by his voice.

“… And I’d like to see any of those court dandies out here, proving their mettle. See if they could survive as we have! Encounter these dangers without shaking to pieces and running home to bury their faces in their mother’s silken skirts!”

As evidenced by the silence of his audience, this is obviously a speech oft given. Their progress is slow, as for every two dips of his companion’s paddle into the water, the speaker’s drops once.

The sun manages to break through the clouds and suddenly the world is aglow. A bend in the river carries them to a sight of all the regality of nature: tall trees hit with sunshine, green and red and yellow set afire with light; mist topping the white froth of water around low rapids; a waterfall plunging out of the rocky face of the bluffs before them which soar into the sky.

“That’s a sight to behold, eh? Finer than any castle in France! I wager you can stop crying about leaving the house, now.”

“It wasn’t the house I minded leaving,” says his daughter.

“It’s a glorious world, this. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Business—who cares for business? There is _life_ to be had, right here!”

Without warning the water picks up speed. The rapids ahead quickly become the rapids _here_. Rocks rise in the water before them like rows of teeth. The hull of the boat bumps against a boulder and sends the stern spinning clockwise.

“Hold on, my girl!”

The pair fight for control. They paddle hard, dodging submerged tree trunks, pushing off rocks, trying to read the water for clues as to hidden obstacles beneath the whorls. The boat lurches. A lighter vessel would have made it through without difficulty, but their bulk throws off their balance and prevents them from making the quick turns necessary to avoid the boulders.

—And suddenly the air has become water, and the world is ice cold, and she is sputtering and fighting for balance against the push of the water and shifting rocks beneath her feet.

She hears a shout and turns to see her father some yards away, soaked from head to foot. He is holding on to the boat with all his strength, legs digging into the shoal, water streaming down his face. His coat is gone, and his shirt and suspenders offer little in the way of warmth, but this does not concern him at present. He gestures to the items racing away from them.

“I can hold it a little longer! Get the supplies!”

She wades to the shore then runs along the bank to try to cut off the escaping parcels further downstream. She times it well, plunging back in just as the current carries them to where she is—but she can only hold so much, and the water fights her for what she does manage to catch. She watches in despair as most of their supplies and trading items surge forward on their watery route, lost forever.

Her father has managed to haul the boat to shore. They assess their position in silence.

“That could have gone better,” he says, but shows her a smile. “At least we didn’t lose the furs. And everything on the floating line is still here.”

She hugs her arms to her stomach and says nothing. They had been taught how to lash down the ropes so that even a capsized boat would suffer nothing more than some water in inconvenient places, but he had been in a hurry to start that morning, hoping to paddle out from under the cover of the rainclouds, and had brushed off her reminders.

Shivering, she looks for the parcel that holds flint and tinder. It is nowhere to be found.

“We lost the blankets too,” she tells him.

Her father’s eyes are distant, his nose sniffing the air like a dog’s. “Smoke,” he says. “I smell smoke. Someone has a fire going. Come along!”

“We can’t intrude,” she manages between chattering teeth, but he scoffs at this. Would she rather freeze? he demands, and she must admit she would not. This is unknown country, though, and there is no predicting into whose arms they are walking, or how friendly the arms. She is a woman, after all, and her father is not skilled in combat.

The smell is strong and they go hardly any distance at all before finding the source. A short side branch of the river ends in a small pool fed by a thin waterfall. The space is sheltered by the rock bluff and surrounding trees. A healthy fire burns some distance from the bank. Beyond is a small lodge made of saplings embedded in the ground, bent and tied together at the top and walled with woven mats. A pile of furs beside it speaks to the next task of the occupant: insulating it for the cold nights coming.

“This is someone’s home,” she realizes, first with panic, then with confusion. It cannot be the home of a native, isolated like this—but why would any European live here, alone in the wilderness, with a house such as the natives build instead of a sturdy cabin of logs?

A rabbit is roasting over the fire. Her father rubs his hands together. “Let us hope they are hospitable,” he says, and almost at the same time they hear a sharp voice from within the shadows where the trees meet the rock outcropping.

Her frantic, searching eyes can just make out a human shape amid the tree trunks. It does not move.

Her father bows and extends his arms out in a sign of affability. He calls a series of greetings in different languages.

The voice answers shortly. Her father replies in an unknown tongue. _Tongues_ , rather; while she does not share in his linguistic talents, she has picked up enough vocabulary to know that he is cobbling together various regional vernaculars in order to make himself understood. From his gestures she gathers he is recounting their misfortune and asking for the refuge of the stranger’s hearthside. “Do not worry,” he chortles. “We are not missionaries.”

The conversation goes on like this for a short while, the unseen voice becoming gradually calmer and the fur trader’s more confident. It seems they will be staying, then.

She asks quietly, “Why does he stay to the shadows?”

“He says his appearance is quite fierce. He does not want to frighten us.”

“Tell him we don’t mind. This is his home, isn’t it? Why should he have to stay away?”

Her father calls again, and after a brief silence that ends with a low mutter from the shadows, their host emerges from the darkness beneath the trees.

He is a giant of a man, over six feet tall. His head is hairless except for a scalplock that runs from his forehead to the base of his neck. There are beaded and feathered ornaments in his ears and colored bands on both arms. His body looks sturdy as an oak. Despite the chill in the air, he is bare-chested, and his arms and chest are covered in tattoos; he wears deerskin leggings, and she envies him his fur-lined moccasins.

It is his face that chills her blood.

Every inch of the skin is painted with garish colors. Designs extend onto his scalp, chaotic patterns in black clay and red cinnabar; even his ears are colored white with chalk. His mouth is painted yellow ochre. A band of black blocks out the space around his eyes, which are outlined in red. Taken as a whole, his visage is a thing of nightmares come to life. It is meant to frighten, she knows instinctively. This is no war paint. It is a mask.

“Osage.”

“Certainly not, look at all the paint on his face.”

“Are you an expert in their ways? Go on, then, tell him to take it off!”

The man takes in their sodden appearance and motions to the fire. They settle in next to it, and she is so relieved to feel its permeating heat that she does not notice their host has stepped away until he returns with two buffalo robes. Hers stinks to high heaven but it is as warm as a living body and she accepts it with gratitude.

The brave seats himself on a log on the other side of the fire. With a nod of his head he indicates that they help themselves to the meat. Her father looks at her expectantly, and she stifles a sigh and serves it. It is not that he considers her role to be one of a servant, it is only that after a bad incident early in their voyage he lives in fear of burning himself on hot grease. She has burned herself plenty of times since, saving his fingers, but has also learned how to handle hot food with care.

“Ask him why he lives alone.”

The men speak. Her father stumbles over his syllables. The Osage, she remembers another coureur des bois saying, speak an impossible language. He listens with an ear cocked toward their host, as though hard of hearing, and barely manages to translate the gist.

When the warrior speaks it sounds like singing. Some words he draws out so slowly they sound like a hum. Others have greater force, but generally the sounds are soft, as though the language were created for the pleasure of the ear—as though the sound was created first and paired with a meaning, instead of the other way around.

She finds a sort of trencher beside the fire, misshapen but sanded smooth, and on it she divvies up the rabbit. Her portion and her father’s she places on layers of wide green leaves, then steps across to offer their host his share. He glances at her with his red-drawn eyes and she nearly drops the trencher. She settles back into her seat beside her father, trying not to appear hurried, and busies herself cleaning her knife so that she does not have to look back up until the cold stutter of her heart has slowed.

“His tribe exiled him here,” her father translates. “An outcast, eh?” He bumps her with his elbow. “Just like us!”

“We didn’t have to be outcasts.” She keeps her voice low, so that he could only hear if he were listening closely. However, his attention has returned to their host.

“His people say he is possessed by a demon.”

“A _what?_ ”

“An evil spirit.”

She snorts. “Nonsense.”

“Are you God or his angels, to make such a statement?”

“I’ve a God-given brain, that tells me one must observe him but a moment to know there is nothing within his body but his own soul. Look at him! He conducts himself as an intelligent being, he communicates like any human. He does not eat like a wild animal. If there is anything wrong with him, it certainly isn't supernatural.”

The brave has been watching them closely. He says something to her father.

“He asks who you are. If I say you’re my daughter he might want to keep you. Shall I say you are my wife?”

She grates, “Anyone with eyes can see how I resemble you. He will know you’re lying. It’s probably a test, and you will fail and he will kill us.”

He laughs and she realizes he was teasing her. She never knows anymore when to take his irresponsibility seriously—once his most endearing attribute, it has landed them in dozens of predicaments since alighting on this new soil, and worry over what he is going to do next has put her on constant guard.

Darkness falls quickly. Father and daughter curl up beside the fire, wrapped snugly in the buffalo robes. The Osage warrior vanishes into the night. Her last thought before drifting off is that if he kills her in her sleep at least she will die warm.

-o-

They wake with the birds to a gray sky. The fire is low and their host is nowhere to be seen. “Looks like we won’t be getting any breakfast,” says her father, who refuses to eat fish in the morning. Her own empty stomach reminds her that they are no better off than they were when the canoe capsized.

“At least we still have the boat,” her father philosophizes. “And the furs. We’ll get to the nearest trading post and cash in. It will be a lean winter, but we’ll know better for next year.” He holds up the buffalo robe admiringly. “Think he’d mind?” He chortles at the look on her face and tosses the hide in a heap beside the fallen log.

Just as they are leaving, a wolf enters the clearing. It stops immediately and sniffs the air, put on the alert by their scent.

“A magnificent specimen!” is the quiet exclamation to her right, and her heart leaps in agreement. The wolf’s size indicates a female; its movements are sleek and fluid, its eyes bright and intelligent, its fur as red as the leaves of the maple tree above them.

“Look at it, Hélène. The king himself will beg me for it.” She realizes for the first time that he has his rifle with him, and now it is propped against his shoulder, his fingers fumbling for the correct placement.

“Father,” she says, “Father, don’t.”

The gun erupts in a flare of yellow. She chokes on the smoke, waving it out of her eyes, hoping against hope.

The wolf is on the ground. Not dead—not yet: her body convulses with pain. They are both crying, wolf and woman, and the latter takes two steps forward before she is brought up short by a roar like that of an enraged grizzly.

Petrified, the travelers turn to see the huge figure of their host coming down the wooded hill toward them at a sprint. His eyes are on the prone figure of the wolf. He launches over the stream in a single bound and charges across the clearing. The wolf whimpers and tries to crawl to him. The light in her eyes fades as he falls to his knees by her body.

He presses his face into her side. When he lifts his head his painted skin is stained completely red with blood. His eyes fall on the transfixed duo and the gun still in the coureur’s hand.

Then she is screaming and her father is fighting and yelling for her to run and the brave has his quarry’s throat in one hand and his gun in the other. She pulls at the arm holding the gun, hoping to wrench the weapon from his grasp and use it as a bludgeon. When that fails, she looks around frantically for a thick tree branch. His attention is on her father; he seems to want to relish every choking breath and gurgle he can squeeze from the murderer’s throat, and does not attend to her until she knocks the branch (admittedly not a thick one, as the only ones long enough to match his height must also be light enough for her to heft) against the back of his skull.

His eyes automatically shift to her and some of the red light in his eyes clears. He sees her through the battle haze and suddenly she knows, she knows what the price of his vengeance will be.

“No,” says her father. “No!”

But that is the consequence. The coureur took his most precious companion, and so will the coureur's be taken from him.

She waits for her father to say he will die before letting such a thing come to pass. He is silent.

A subdued trio takes the place of the one raging just moments before. None look at each other; each is occupied with their own thoughts. The coureur is ushered back to the canoe and looks around helplessly. The oars were lost in the crash. She finds the branch she used against the brave still gripped in her hand and gives it to him to use as a propelling pole.

She touches his sleeve. “You’ll come back for me, Father.”

He nods brusquely, not meeting her eyes.

She steps forward to help him launch the canoe. Perhaps, perhaps! if she is quick!—but a hand falls heavy on her shoulder, and her father must wrestle with the pole and watercraft on his own. She watches with blurring eyes as he drifts into the center of the river and is caught by the current. He has vanished around a bend before five heartbeats have passed. The brave throws the rifle into the middle of the deep water after him.

Shock overwhelms fear, at least for the present, turning her numb and bold. She blinks rapidly and squares her shoulders. Best to set precedent. Facing her captor, she puts her hands on her hips. “Well, you have me. Now what are you going to do?”

He seems to have reached the same question. He says something to her, the meaning of which she cannot begin to guess; when she does nothing but look at him, he says it again, and something else, sounding angry. She watches him warily. Finally he scowls and walks away. For lack of a better idea she follows him.

When he reaches the clearing he comes to an abrupt halt. A heap of red fur lies between the pool and the tree line. She is behind him and a little to the side, so she sees his face when he sees his dead companion again.

He picks up the body with more tenderness than she would have credited a man of his brawn. Watching him, she knows that though he may kill her at any time he will not molest or torture her; he is violent but not cruel. Carrying the limp form in both arms, he walks out of the clearing and into the trees toward the ridge from whence he descended just a short time earlier. What he does with the body she never discovers.

The grass and dirt are stained purple. She digs up the spot with her knife and realizes too late that she should have used the blade instead of a tree branch, then decides it would not have stopped him anyway.

Every instinct tells her to run. Every grain of sense tells her only a fool would take off into the woods without supplies or a plan and try to outwit a native scout. He will chase her at his leisure and catch her when he tires of the game, or simply watch her run around in his backyard and come fetch her when he chooses. She is five days downriver from a French settlement, she knows, and perhaps a day or two upriver from a trading post of unknown nationality. She does not know how many river days are equal to days on foot.

Such must be her plan, then: hoard stores and somehow build a boat, and hope her father went straight downstream to the trading post.

She drops her forehead to her fist in despair. Her father. How will she find her father? The clearing is the only place he can be sure she is located. This land is so vast and empty. If she leaves this place and he is not at the trading post it is highly unlikely they will ever meet again.

Her captor does not return for nearly two days, during which she is afraid to move from her place by the fire for fear that he will come roaring through the trees after her. She finds a blackberry tangle and manages to catch a fat trout in the waterfall pool by cornering it in the shallows and using the other buffalo skin as an awkward net. The rest of the time she fills her belly with water.

At night she listens to wolves howling a few miles away, and once she hears the unmistakable sound of a grizzly crashing through the undergrowth. She builds the fire up to warn predators away, then panics that it will draw attention. No beasts appear, however; neither does her captor.

“Fool,” she calls herself on the second night, through teeth that chatter from a sudden cold snap. “You have not seen a sign of him in days. Every second he’s been gone is another step that might have taken you further from this place. He might be miles from here, and you could be on your way to safety within the walls of the fort if you would but summon a bit of courage. Anyway, it is better to die trying.”

Such a speech would have worked but for one thing: the conviction that running would have been her father’s choice. The image of him attempting escape is so clear in her mind, from cautious beginning to certain tragic end, that it keeps her firmly in her seat even as all the blood in her body cries out for her to _move_.

She can almost be thankful for her standing acquaintance with uncertainty; the feeling is uncomfortable but familiar. To predict her father’s next move is impossible: he might be on the way with a rescue party, or rashly returning with nothing but his rifle and a full box of cartridges, or locked up for drunkenness, or drowned in the river. She half expects to starve or freeze to death before the Osage warrior returns. He is another enigma: showing them kindness at odds with his grotesque appearance, then turning on them in a madness to match his face. She does not know what he wants with her, and forces herself to consider every possibility, which results in her sharpening her knife. The only thing she does not doubt is that he will hunt her.

He finally reappears without even the snap of a twig as warning. The sun has just sunk behind the bluffs and she has built the fire high. He has not cleaned the blood off his face. She wonders with racing heart just how far away he has gone—and just how close he has been. She is thankful now that she never tried to run.

His arms are full of wriggling red fur and for a breath of time she thinks the wolf is not dead after all, until he drops the mass into her lap and it divides into four lumps. “Pups,” she gasps, both enchanted and aghast. She looks up at her captor. His eyes are shadowed; not a glint of the fire can be found in them. She bows her head in understanding of her appointed task, and gathers the four balls of fur to her chest. He goes into his lodge and does not emerge until morning breaks.

The wolf litter she keeps in a pen built of sticks driven into the ground like a miniature compound. She feeds them birds’ eggs and raw trout—poor substitutes for mother’s milk but the best alternatives she is able to provide. Based on her knowledge of puppies they look to be about five months old, and she comforts herself with the thought that they would have been weaned soon, besides.

Her captor comes and goes like a ghost, leaving to hunt, returning to eat and sleep, barely looking at her when he is present. At all times his expression is neutral beneath the paint. He does not attempt to communicate again, though he mutters things at her out of habit, as one might speak to a dumb animal. He gives her a portion of all the meat he brings back and it makes her feel like a wolf pup herself—the helpless captive fed by the capable master. Their silent meals are broken only by the snap of the fire. With the exception of her care for the wolves he demands nothing from her; she hopes that his intention is to release her when they are grown, if she has not managed to escape by then.

She hardly sleeps, listening for the whistle that will summon her to a canoe waiting in the river shallows. Dawn arrives without fail and she is still there. Every morning, she is still there.

Near dawn on the eighth morning her captor charges out of the lodge and heads toward the fire. She sits up, disoriented and terrified, scrambling for her knife in the dark, only to watch him dip a torch in the flames. When he lifts it she can see the poles of some kind of tools resting on his shoulder. His face does resemble a demon then, the way the hollows of his eyes and cheeks become black holes, his painted and bloodied face made even more ghastly in the flickering light. He says something sharp at her—she surmises it means _stay here_ —and vanishes into the woods. She watches the light grow smaller until it stops somewhere around the northward riverbank. Eventually the sunrise washes away the yellow star of light and she can only guess where he is and what he is doing.

He returns in the late afternoon and gathers half the pile of skins in his arms. She cannot help being impressed—she knows how heavy such a stack is—but the thought is forgotten in the panic that rises when he indicates she is to follow him. He seems to be vibrating with energy—his long legs move so quickly that she has to run to keep up with him. His head is constantly in motion, attention caught by the calls and cries within the woodland, his eyes skimming over every fire-bright leaf, every passing insect, every ray of sunlight that breaks through the canopy cover. He talks to her from time to time, his speech quicker than the song-like words of before. He gestures at things for her benefit but his own notice does not linger; by the time she locates what has caught his interest he is looking elsewhere. He seems to want her to see the world as he sees it, but there is something in his vision that hers is missing. He does not look angry, she tells herself, unwilling to assign the term _happy_ to his mood. She thinks: overexcited, feverish, manic.

They step into a sun-filled clearing a short distance from low river bluffs and she finds her answers waiting there. He has built her a lodge. It is incomplete, the skeleton of saplings wanting the pelts he carries, but the effect is just as charming.

“Want your privacy, do you,” she observes. “You could just release me, you know.”

He spreads a black bearskin on the ground to serve as her bed, then motions to her to help attach the other furs to the frame of the lodge. He works four times more quickly than she does.

The hut is small, will only just hold her, but it is hers. She cannot help smiling: her own house.

“Thank you.” She places a hand on the lodge. He nods. She bites her lip, debating. There is a gray wolf pelt on the lodge and she brings his attention to it. “I’m sorry,” she tells him, her sincerity unmistakable, “about your friend.”

He nods again and busies himself with securing the furs so that there are no gaps between the layers.

“What is your name?”

At the lilt of a question in her voice he glances at her.

She presses her fist to her breastbone. “Hélène. I am Hélène.”

His expression does not change.

“Evidently I’ve spent my time learning all the wrong languages. Do you speak French?”

His eyes are moving, scanning her face. The fever of momentum that brought the lodge into existence still churns behind them. She tries to keep her own fixed on his and ignore the rest of his lurid visage.

“Very well. I suppose that’s the right way of it anyway. It’s your castle—I expect I ought to learn your language. Not that you’re anxious to teach me.” And because there is a part of her that refuses to go nameless for the indefinite length of her time here, she indicates herself and repeats, “Hélène. My name is Hélène. _Hélène_.”

His eyes are alert and shrewd (an evil spirit, what idiocy!—even though instinct screams _too much, too much_ ) and she sees the moment he comprehends what she is trying to explain. “Ey len,” he says, bowing his head slightly in understanding. He taps his knuckles against his own breastbone. “Shon son he.” He walks over to a sycamore tree and lays his hand flat on it. “Shon son he,” he repeats.

“Shon son he. Does that mean sycamore? Mine means bright light. Like fire, or the sun.” She points at the sun and says her name. He appears amused, looking at her hair.

“Yes. I know. You aren’t the first,” she says.

He glances at the sun and says, “Mi.”

“ _My_. That’s the sun? Perhaps you are willing to teach me after all. What is the word for supper?”

He does feed her when they are back in the waterfall clearing again. Her empty stomach eagerly receives the entire trout handed to her, though she does wonder how long the unparalleled flavor of hunger will hold up against her desperation for salt.

When they are finished eating he vanishes into the darkness beyond the firelight. She sits patiently, wishing for her bearskin bed and aware that she does not know how to find it in the dark. He returns with a basket, into which she loads the drowsy wolf quartet. Clutching it with both arms, she turns to follow her captor to her house in the woods.

-o-

Her move into the small lodge marks the start of an unprecedented span of peaceful solitude.

She busies herself weaving mats for the inner walls of her lodge, as his is made. On warm nights she can hardly bear to enter the lodge, let alone sleep with the thick odor of the animal skins surrounding her. That task completed, she draws on the scanty knowledge imparted to her upon her departure from her old life and entry into her new one. She turns her hand toward homestead tasks: gathering dry wood, making soap, drying seeds from plants for a spring garden (if she is here that long). She snares small game and smokes it—it is late to start winter stores but something is better than nothing. She is a poor butcher but tells herself that with every new catch comes experience. With her knife she fashions a crude set of wooden tableware and makes a fishing rod with a hook fashioned from a hairpin and line woven from her own hair.

They are unimpressive attempts but she is proud beyond belief to discover what she is made of: sturdy, strong-hearted stuff. She cannot help laughing a little at her domesticity—she, who once drank from fine gold-edged porcelain and ate off silver plates that could have passed for mirrors. She thought she had learned a great deal about herself these last few months, but here, in yet another life she neither asked for nor wanted, she finds she is more resilient and resourceful than she ever imagined.

One day she crawls out on an overhanging limb above the river and ties her red handkerchief to the branch. If her father passes beneath he cannot miss it.

Without noticing it, she starts to fall in love with her life. It is a rogue thought, and when it tries to rear its head she pushes it back down and looks the other way. She does not closely examine the reasons she is not trying to escape. She finds a log that would do well to carve into a boat, but does not start the project; in her mind her stores are collected in preparation for harsh weather, not a trip down the river.

She entertains herself with flimsy reed whistles; she tells herself new versions of old stories; she plays games with the wolf pups. She sees her captor so rarely that she wonders if she is truly a fool to stay, plan or not. Every few days he brings meat to the clearing—ostensibly for the pups, but there is always enough for her too.

So becomes the pattern of her days.

-o-

The day is unaccountably warm, but she does not question it, receiving it instead as a gift. It allows her to shed most of her wraps with only a little discomfort, which she counters by carting water up from the waterfall pool until she is sweating with exertion. Sick of the smell of buffalo on her skin, she bathes in the privacy of her lodge. Washing her hair feels like the greatest imaginable luxury. She goes outside to her boulder and spreads it around her to dry.

She inherited her father’s complexion and eyes, but her hair is all her mother’s. In the sunshine it catches all the light and turns to a sheet of beaten gold. Cleansed of oil and stench, it feels weightless as swan’s down.

Pleased with the result, she washes her clothes in the rushing river, scrubbing them with gravel. Her fingertips are tinged blue before she is finished. Still clad in her underthings, she settles back in the sun to wait for her skirt and shirt to dry. She sings a fragment of a gypsy song before falling silent and listening—to the thud of her heart all through her body, to the drone of an insect somewhere overhead, to the rustle of the leaves in the breeze and the faint plop as another one drops to carpet the ground in shades of fire.

When she comes up from the river she finds the wolf pups cowering before her captor, who is on his hands and knees with a cut of raw meat hanging from his teeth. Whenever they try to latch on to the meat, he snarls; any who venture too close are bitten. They are terrified but hungry, having moved on now to denser food that she is not able to provide as frequently as he, and they yelp and whine at the sight and smell of supper so near yet so unattainable. He looks like a monster with his paint and posture, and the sounds he makes send chills up her arms. They cry when he bites them and scatter when he growls.

She comes flying into the clearing, shouting at him to get away from them. He is on his feet in an instant. He looms over her and she falls quiet, but she does not move away and her hands are balled at her sides. He yells at her then, gesturing to the meat, and she can only guess that the words he is calling her are synonymous to what she has just called him.

He keeps repeating the same noise. “I don’t know what you’re saying!” she says through clenched teeth. Finally he pushes her aside and, with an irritated gesture that she should watch, he shows the pups the steak. When they came toward him he growls; when they growl back he shaves off bits of meat and tosses it to them.

She finally realizes what he is doing: _teaching_. They have to be fierce in the wild. No one will hand them their suppers when they are grown.

She feels foolish and is almost glad she does not have the words to apologize; her pride already smarts. He senses her shift in attitude, however. When he hands her a portion and indicates that she mimic him, she knows it is his way of making peace. And then she feels silly, snarling on the ground like a beast, before realizing that she is still performing for an absent audience. No one in France is here, nor do they care that she is here; her life may be whatever she makes it, she realizes, and feels some rigid piece within her snap in half.

When the pups are snoring with bloated bellies and she is scrubbing the smell of blood off her hands, he wanders into a cluster of trees situated to the side of the clearing. He turns to give her a curious look.

“It’s a chapel,” she says, somewhat defiantly. “For _my_ spirits.”

She has made flimsy walls of rush mats, leaving the canopy for a roof. He tilts his head back to study the dried flowers she has woven through the branches.

“Chitokaka,” he says knowingly.

She recalls her father mentioning that the Jesuits have been here. Hope of rescue flares in her—if her captor has encountered the priests so often as to know their teachings, might they not pass by again soon?—until she remembers that she has not seen even a glimpse of anyone from his own tribe. There is no telling how much time has passed since he last encountered people, her surprise encounter with him notwithstanding.

He has brought her the whole deer. With herbs she found in the woods she begins to dress the haunch he hands her while he skins and guts the remainder. It is rare for him to stay and eat with her, but she supposes it has to do with wanting a good supper out of his generosity. She wishes she could converse with him. Unsettling as he looks, it might help put her more at ease around him.

They eat in silence, both watching the flames. She finishes first and absently sketches figures in the dirt with a twig. She says quietly: “My mother was the daughter of a duke. She loved my father and her family loved her, and they tolerated him because she threatened to run away otherwise. But when she died it was too much to ask that they forget he was a gypsy or overlook the fact that I was gypsy spawn. By then it was too late. He’d lived half his life as a lord. He said it would have been demeaning for him to return to his natural level of society. If we had to be outcasts, he said, we would go where no one knew to cast us out. He said, what better place to start a new life than in a New World?”

He is listening even if he does not understand. She props her elbow on her knee and rests her chin on it. “I wish I knew your story. Has this always been your home?”

Home? It becomes a sort of game, a cobbling of gestures and pictures to communicate the meaning of _home_ as both of them define it. Hers is across the ocean, but he does not know what an ocean is. Eventually he nods as though he understands, but she suspects he merely thinks she comes from across a wide expanse of grass.

His home? But he only shakes his head. She remembers her father’s words— _an evil spirit, an outcast_ —and wishes she could ask what really caused his expulsion from his tribe, whether it was a misunderstanding or something truly terrible. She wonders whether his people are good-hearted and fearful, or merely superficial, as hers proved to be.

The answer to one question arrives more quickly than expected.

From the beginning he allows her to wander, and when one day she goes further than usual she does not worry as she once did that he will come tearing through the trees in pursuit. She keeps the river in earshot and follows a set of deer tracks, more out of curiosity than hunger. Coming to the top of a bluff, she hears a strange sound—naggingly familiar but unplaceable until she looks down into the shallow valley. Through the trees, she sees—

“ _People_ ,” she breathes.

With a rush of longing she realizes how much, despite her peaceful solitude, she still craves community. She wants laughter and activity and the joy of many hands laboring together. The village is Osage, she can tell even from this distance.

She just watches. They appear to be a cheerful, generous people. Women work their way down rows of corn, beans, squash, and pumpkins, harvesting the season’s crop. Mothers carry babies on cradleboards. Children chase each other and play with hoops. The men must be away hunting; she must have gone even further than she realized if she has never encountered their hunting parties before. Her captor has built his home as far from his origins as he dares without leaving the safety of their territory. Did they choose the site, or did he? She remembers their first meeting, him staying within the cover of the trees, and suspects that the distance of his expulsion was voluntary. She thinks about his face paint, the way it deliberately cultivates fear, the sort of fear that would keep others safely away.

Not until the sun slants into her eyes does she realize how late it is. She turns back reluctantly, lost in pleasant memories of the afternoon’s sights and sounds. Hunger, forgotten by the novelty of the village vista, makes itself known again; a snare close to the lodge might have finally caught the turkey she has been stalking, and she has high hopes for supper.

With a destination in mind instead of a leisurely stroll, the walk back seems long and far more arduous than the initial venture. The river on her left marks her return path. She quickens her pace to be home before nightfall.

The sky turns to the watery gold that precludes sunset. She has learned to measure time by shadow-lengths and knows she should have been home by now, but she still recognizes nothing. With a jolt she remembers that during her outward journey there was a point along the river where she had to cross a small outer branch. Her heart goes cold. Which branch brought her to the village, and which one is she following? Has she come to the fork yet, or is it ahead?

The autumn light fades quickly. She knows she is lost long before she will admit to it. When she finally forces herself to turn back, she can hardly see down the shelf of the riverbank, let alone across the water; she has enough trouble walking in the darkness without keeping an eye out for the nearly-invisible fork. Despair and panic wrestle for control of her thoughts; she wants nothing more than to sit down and cry, but that won’t get her home. No, it will only draw the attention of the forest animals that are now at a greater advantage than she, blessed as they are with keen senses of smell and eyesight. She tells herself worse things have happened than this, at least she has the river as a guide, thank God she did not leave it on her initial wanderings, if she keeps quiet and stays in the moonlight she will be safely home soon enough.

The faintest noise comes from her left. The skin on the back of her neck crawls; something is there in the darkness. She freezes. A bear? A cougar? Her knife is a paltry weapon against claws and teeth.

She doesn’t move or make a sound, wishing she could stop breathing, that the pounding of her heart would calm so that she could hear properly. Then a shadow moves and terror turns to relief.

“Shon son he!” she cries, and runs to him. Throwing her arms around his waist, she shows him a huge smile. Tears of relief prick her eyes and she blinks them away before she can make a greater spectacle of herself.

She does not need words to know he thought she was running away; the shock on his face tells her. The happiness that replaces it when he realizes she wants to return with him turns her warm inside and rather flustered.

“Let’s go home.”

“Home,” he repeats. They make their way to the river fork (she had indeed followed the wrong branch) and he guides them back to the safety of her own fire and lodge, and she keeps hold of his hand the whole way there.

-o-

“Bah po,” he says, gesturing to an elderberry bush.

“Bah po.”

He shakes his head. “Bah po.”

She repeats him obediently until he is satisfied.

Slowly— _very_ slowly—he is teaching her the names of the flora and fauna. He tells her the words for things she would not know even in her own language, for they don’t exist in France. He is not particularly interested in her translation, but enjoys her delight when she comes across a familiar flower. It feels like finding a long-absent friend—a smiling face in the bloom.

He has started to leave her small gifts. He leaves them in her lodge, never handing them directly to her: decorative carvings; beads for her ears; a better fishing net; even moccasins, once, that were so warm and beautifully beaded that she could not help thanking him, though it only resulted in a total lapse into silence on his part that continued for two days.

Unfortunately, silence is not the only thing that lasts around the waterfall pool. He has spells—some sort of mental spells, which come on fast and stop just as quickly, but the time spent between those points is excruciating. On any given day she might enter his clearing to find a different version of the same man waiting there. She has begun to understand why his people called it an evil spirit, though she condemns their solution.

One morning she enters the waterfall clearing to find the lodge demolished and its inhabitant constructing an entirely new structure. He climbs the cliff face without thought for caution, targeting saplings that are growing in the crags.

She observes this with foreboding. He is utterly reckless, in a way her own irresponsible father never reached. But her father is consistent in his foibles, while her captor is proving himself inconsistent on all counts. He frightens her; she cannot understand what is happening to him, or why he is acting in such a way. He works feverishly, barely sleeps. She tries to stay near him, if only to be by his side for the inevitable collapse—but he does not collapse. When she sees him eyeing her in a way the man she has come to know never would have allowed himself to, she removes herself from his immediate vicinity.

When she ventures back many days later, she finds him asleep in the lodge. The discovery is a relief—his manic energy ran out, evidently; perhaps sleep will right him—but he does not stir from his bed. By the second week she is frightened enough to seriously consider fetching help from the Osage village, though she does not go. When he is awake he is too fatigued even to sit up; he stares at nothing, and when she speaks to him she can see the sluggishness in his eyes as he attempts to respond.

Any part of him that is _him_ seems to have left his body; he worked like a man crazed, and now lies about like his soul has drained out of him.

When any energy is present, it spends itself in screaming at her, words she does not understand and rage she cannot comprehend, or in sobbing with grief. Through the night she listens to heartbroken cries unlike any she has ever heard from another human being. Eventually his throat becomes too raw to cry. Then he simply looks weary; his eyes are dulled, as though he no longer has a single care for the world outside or anything it holds.

“It won’t last,” she pleads. “You’ll come out of this.” He sometimes understands her meaning, and then the sense of dread exuding from him practically taints the air—as though he does not want to care again, or bear the weight of facing each new day.

It is as though all the sorrow in his life—past, present, and future—has come upon him at once. But there is no tangible occurrence on which to pin it. She knows if she were able to ask him what is wrong, he would look lost; he would not know; everything is wrong, he would tell her.

But there is life there, something holding him to the world, even as she knows how much he hates to hope.

When he emerges from the depression he looks exhausted—with himself, with life itself. But when he is manic, he glows from within. His entire body turns into a flame, hands always moving, mind racing, eyes alight, beholding the world with wonder, beholding her with reverence. He breathes deeply of the autumn air, arms outspread to the glory of color spread above him, talking too fast again, sleeping too little. He tries to pull her along with him, wanting her to be as full of all the light and speed and passion within him, and is frustrated when she fails to perform as desired. He is a ship without an anchor, eager to plunge into the waves, purposely ignoring the hole in the hull. He is exhausted but cannot stop himself; he overflows with ardor but is irritable too, cannot bear to be touched or spoken to except when such a gesture is invited. She knows if she were able to ask him what is wrong, he would look perplexed; nothing is wrong, he would tell her. Everything is perfect. Everything is wonderful.

Sometimes she feels as though she has been called to navigate through fog. Communication with him is difficult enough as it is; guessing his moods and what might trigger the changes in him is exhausting and nerve-wracking.

She feels helpless. She hurts for him, but does not know how to help him. She wants to fix what happens inside him, and she cannot. She wants to give him the peace he craves, and she cannot.

And sometimes he looks at her as though she is the anchor—as though she is the only fixed point in his world. Sometimes he looks at her as though he holds on not even for his own sake but for hers.

-o-

Peaceful days outnumber chaotic ones. She counts this as a blessing.

“Ho wa,” he greets her.

“Good morning.”

She dips her buckets as far out as she can reach without getting her skirt wet. The further out, the cleaner the water. She takes a long drink from one, the sharp coldness of it waking her fully.

He is standing knee-high in the water, to all appearances impervious to its numbing effect. When he pulls in his net it is mostly empty. He plucks sodden leaves out of the mesh. “Moh se kon,” he says, tossing a crawfish to the wolf pups running back and forth on the bank.

She tells him, “I don’t need to know that one. I dislike crawfish.”

He frowns at her. “Moh se kon,” he repeats.

“Moh se kon,”she says.

They enjoy two trout for breakfast, along with a sorry excuse for corncakes that she has managed to cobble together. “I wish I could make beignets for you,” she tells him, readying corncobs for her next attempt. “I wish I could feed you croissants, brioche, baguette hot from the oven—with cheese and butter and milk and chocolate—oh, I can just see the look on your face. You would think I’m a good spirit come down from heaven.”

He listens with half an ear, his attention on the task at hand. He is fletching arrows. Every so often he holds a rod to the sturdy longbow lying beside him to check the length. He will discard one or hum with approval over another for no reason that she can see.

“What do your tattoos mean?” She brushes her fingers over one, light as a butterfly. His body is covered with them. He says something to her— _why do you always ask questions when you cannot understand the answers?_ she is certain it means—but he tells her anyway, and that was all she wanted, really: the sound of his voice.

He talks to her as they work, and she gets the sense that he is telling her stories, painting the whole picture in vivid detail. He will make motions every so often, mimicking actions with weapons, and she gathers she is being told tales of feats of warrior strength. The tattoos commemorate them, she assumes, and it is easy to believe—he is as fierce and courageous as one of the great African lions she once saw at the Paris zoo.

She goes back to her watching-spot on the ridge above the Osage village and settles in. Certain figures have become familiar to her; she smiles in one-sided greeting at seeing some of her favorites out and about.

A girl of perhaps eight runs out to join her friends in a hoop-and-stick game, only to be called back, shoulders sagging, to assist her mother with stretching hides. Another group of women sit chatting, grinding corn with one eye on their children. Dogs run around the feet of the game-players, barking with excitement. The men are home today, and are busy hollowing out future canoes and wrestling each other in exercise teams, onlookers cheering for and jeering at the figures on the ground. A group of elders smoke pipes while looking on. One holds a spear wrapped in the fur of three different animals. She wonders what denotes feats of warrior strength to the Osage.

She watches a couple, one of her particular favorites, who just had their first baby. They are both swollen with pride over their creation, and it has only increased their affection for each other. She wonders, were they a love-match or was their marriage arranged, and the pair fortuitously found love waiting in the other? How do the Osage court?

She returns to him with cupped hands full of blackberries and is greeted by an offering of smoked venison (tah sen tsa scah), her favorite. While they eat she tries to relay a picture of what she saw; he grunts occasionally. For all that, she knows he is paying keen attention. He misses his people, she knows; this is his only link to them, and it is quite likely he will know exactly who she is describing if she hits on the right details. It is her gift to him, the only one of value she is able to offer in return for everything he has given her.

He talks to her as the night darkens and the fire burns low. Curling up against the log in a buffalo robe, she falls asleep to the sound of his voice. She knows what he is saying. It is only what her heart has been beating for weeks: _you love it here_.

-o-

“Strangers across the river,” she murmurs, trying to think of how to communicate such a sentence. Illiniwek or Kiowa? She does not know the difference; all she knows is that there are more than she can count, weaving between trees and shadows. She has never seen a war party but she has an awful feeling she is getting her first glimpse of one.

Then she turns, and—a blur of brown and black, then two strong arms are around her like a vise. This is not the right body, not the right tattoos. She screams as loudly as she can before hands clamp down over her mouth. The stranger turns with her in his grasp and she sees there are three braves right here. The lascivious looks in their eyes tell her everything. She snarls out a muffled hope that they die screaming.

They do. He is there like a flash of lightning, moving faster than the eye can follow, burying his tomahawk in a throat, an arrow in an eye, his knife the length of a stomach. She stumbles into his arms and he pulls her forward, out sight from the rest of the party across the river.

The others heard the screams of their companions, however, and are already on the move. She runs until she cannot breathe and they still follow, howling their hunting cries to the sky, eyes locked on the two of them. He hauls her up an incline and over rocks that pierce her feet but she does not feel pain because there is no time for pain, there is only fear and too little air in her lungs and eerie cries in her ears. She must be slowing him down and she cannot bear the thought that but for her he could escape, and she puts on a new burst of speed.

They are only racing to their deaths, though. The way they have chosen ends at a cliff’s edge. They stumble through the foliage only to find a plunge into the river waiting beyond and they reel back, distraught and desperate. They are cornered. There is only one possible outcome.

“They want _me_ ,” she shouts at him. “Get away, save yourself!”

He turns toward her in a fury of denial. His eyes look at her as though memorizing her—then he picks her up and throws her off the bluff.

The river is deep and the current fast. She surfaces, coughing but oriented, and allows her body to be carried downstream. She hears nothing but the roar of the rapids.

No bodies follow her into the river. Either they have dropped the pursuit, which seems too much to hope for, or he has chased them off the bluff, or they have killed him and are now on the descent after her.

After about a mile the speed of the water slows and she drags herself to shore. The ties of her skirts are tight from the water and her fingertips are numb with cold, but she must get them off so that she can run. He could be dying, he could be—

A well-known voice says, “Hold fast, madam! We are here to assist you!”

Her head jerks up quick enough to snap her neck. “ _Father?_ ”

He is as surprised to see her as she is to see him. “Hélène! But how have you come to be here? Where is your heathen jailer?” He looks around warily.

“He—let me go.” She takes in the company behind him: a band of men, coureurs all from the look of it, each one armed to the teeth. “What are _you_ doing here, Father? Who are all these people?”

“Didn’t I promise I’d rescue you?” He has her by the elbow now, and turns to the others. “By some miracle of God, my daughter has escaped from the clutches of the Osage devil!”

The men’s faces darken. Voices rise with discontentment. He holds up his arms to calm them. “Never fear. This changes nothing. Whether my girl is here or there does not erase the fact that he held her captive, and did only God knows what with her body. The justice we have come to serve _will_ be meted out!”

“To the lot of ’em!” shouts another, and the group cheers. More voices join in: “All their men! Wipe out every last evildoer! Keep our women safe!”

“Keep _their_ women,” notes someone slyly, and some chuckle in agreement.

A desperate protest bursts from her. She shouts to the assembly, “These Osage are a peaceful people. They only fight when attacked!”

“Good thing that’s what coming to ’em,” calls a voice, and the crowd laughs.

She turns to run—to warn him, to warn them—but the men catch her by the arms before she makes it four steps. They bind her hands and feet with strong rope. “Now, you think you’re friendly with ’em because you been fed ’n clothed by one of ’em,” she is told. “Give it a few days back amongst civilized people an’ you’ll see just how bad you’ve had it. Ain’t no fault’a your’n.”

They are in no hurry to mete out slaughter. She came upon them in the midst of an early luncheon. They tear into their bread and cheese, throwing back canteens of drink and peppering the air with banter and laughter.

Their canoes have been hauled to shore and in them she sees a few supplies and many guns. They place her in one of these when they deem it time to resume their quest. It has been an hour since their paths initially crossed; whatever has happened upriver is done now.

Her father comes over to bid her goodbye. She is to be taken back to the trading post and kept in safety until the marauders return.

“Ah, Hélène! The sight of you has heartened me. With every shot I take, I shall say, ‘This is for my daughter.’”

She cannot look at him. “I wish you’d left me in France,” she says dully. “I wish you’d left me with the rovers.”

“What a thing to say, my girl!”

With that they part once more.

-o-

She waits.

Into the quiet of the early morning enters a distant hum, unmistakably human. It slowly grows louder. Within minutes, long before she sees any of them, she knows the result of the night’s endeavor. Only victors could sing so jubilantly and with such audaciousness. So it was carnage, then. She steadies herself. When they arrive and tell her what they have done, she will not react; she must not react. And sooner or later they will believe her returned to her appropriate mindset and trust her enough to untie her, and she will be gone like a thief in the night.

Dead, they crow, the whole dirty lot (she thinks, Who is dirtier than they? Filthy in their souls, hearts stained black, loveless, lifeless, blind) though they hid their women away well enough. There is no one left for you to fear, they tell her, cutting the bonds from her wrists and ankles. Not a single black hair on their heads. All dead.

She goes still. The Osage color their hair. The black-haired warriors were the strangers she encountered that morning. Suddenly she is desperate with hope. Has the tribe survived? Did the trappers think the invaders were the tribesmen?

When night falls she creeps out of the fort. It is almost absurdly easy; the glorious victors have drunk themselves senseless, and she has picked up more than a few pointers about walking in silence from living alongside an Osage brave. Only the watchman, an ageless man with a weather-lined face and grizzled beard, sees her go. She stops abruptly when she sees him at his post above her—but he only looks steadily at her as though watching the flow of the river, and she steals away through the moonlight without fear of pursuit.

How easily are human hearts swayed. The full moon that she cursed when she thought herself caught by the watchman is now among her greatest blessings, and she gives unceasing thanks for it as she paddles out into the rushing water. Silver-white light is thrown across every boulder and submerged tree that would have capsized her otherwise. She makes good progress, for all that it is the dead of night and she is working against the current. Hard rowing keeps her muscles warm and limber. When dawn breaks she is exhausted but pleased with her labor, and with the first bright gleam of the sun over the bluffs she forgets the aid of the moon, and is naturally inclined to take all the credit for what she has accomplished and for her own body, which has been working hard to assist, pumping adrenaline through her and giving her the strength and speed to believe that perhaps she will be in time after all.

As soon as the strip of the river becomes familiar she is beaching the boat and scrambling onto firm ground. She flies through the forest, heels pounding the dirt, arms keeping her balanced as she dodges obstacles and leaps over fallen tree trunks.

Up—up—up the bluff, to the ridge where she last saw him. There are bodies there, far more than three, but none are his. She barrels down the slope to the waterfall pool.

The scene that greets her makes her pull up in horror. The lodge has been destroyed. Broken saplings spring from the wreckage like jagged bones from a carcass. Even the stream that feeds into the river from the waterfall pool has been ruined—whether intentional on their part or not, it has been filled in with dirt and rocks. Nothing in the clearing moves.

She rummages through the wreckage; nothing. She listens hard; nothing. The surface of the waterfall pool is unbroken. The gray dawn light searches the surrounding woodland with her; both emerge empty-handed.

She wishes desperately that she knew where he buried the red wolf. On the heels of this comes another idea. Oh, but could it—perhaps? Might he have—? She is on her feet again, running before she registers that she is moving, calves burning, lungs sobbing for breath around an unceasing refrain of prayer. Branches catch her in the face, rocks stab her sore feet, her muscles scream for mercy. They would not have known this place existed. It must be. It _must_ be.

She bursts into the clearing where he built her lodge. The sight that greets her brings a cry of relief to her lips despite the horror it connotes. He is propped against the log, staring into the dead fire, and his chest is moving. Blood covers him as though he bathed in it.

The face he raises to her is sullen.

“Oh, _no_.”

She has seen the range of his episodes but none have ever been so deep. It is as though he has stepped into a mist. His eyes do not focus; he does not register her identity. The shock of it all, and the great loss of blood—she cannot guess how far this has taken him, or how long it will take him to return.

She bends over him, weeping. “I’m so sorry,” she says over and over. “I’m so sorry—I’m so sorry—” until the words become part of the rhythm of her body, breathe in, breathe out, how to move him?, _I am so sorry_. She half-carries, half-drags him to the safety of her lodge and puts him gently to bed. He does not acknowledge her.

She does not think, only acts, performing what must be done with ruthless efficiency. Outside again, to build the fire and heat water, inside to clean his wounds. Outside, to race back to the waterfall pool to search through the destruction for a needle. His injuries are many but if she can get the bleeding to stop they will not be life-threatening. She spends a good amount of time binding him back together; he groans in pain. Outside, for fresh water, inside, to bathe his forehead and make him drink.

She brings him food and lays down beside him, unable to offer comfort beyond simple words he cannot understand: “You are not alone now. I’m here. I’m here. I’m not leaving.” He looks at her without blinking. She does not expect an answer but his detachment is unsettling. There is not a flicker of comprehension or interest in his eyes.

So go the days. His body heals so slowly she cannot help feeling slightly grateful he has no desire to move. She cares for him and the wolf pups. She sings old lullabies and hymns and gypsy jigs and wordless orchestral tunes. She tells him who she is and reassures him that he is not alone. Sometimes he listens to her, and she thinks he understands. Usually he doesn’t.

This will pass, she tells herself. And when it does?

When it does, he will come back to himself, and eventually he will have another episode, and another, and it will all repeat for as long as he lives. She knows now that she loves him. Does she have the fortitude to _continue_ loving him, no matter who he turns into or who he is not or who he is at any given moment?

One day he opens his eyes and looks at her as though from a distance. A distance, yes, but with eyes that see her. Gazing at her face, he says something, which she recognizes as the word for _spirit_.

“No, I’m alive. I’m no ghost, do you hear? I’m real, I’m _here!_ ”

But his eyes are closed.

She goes outside and sits down against the log. Bending her head to her knees, she cries into her arms until she is covered in dirt and tears. She cannot go on much longer like this, she knows. If she cannot handle this now, how can she possibly handle it for the long years to come? She cries harder, because she cannot imagine the future holding more pain than she would know at severing herself from him. And after a while, when she is empty of tears and can hear nothing but her heartbeat and the steady in and out of her breathing, it occurs to her that she does not need all the strength for the future right now. All she needs is enough to see her through this minute, and then she will need it for the one after that, and then the next. And it is not what she would have chosen, living minute to minute, but if it is what allows her to stay with him and see the day through, and then tomorrow, and the rest of their lives then yes, she will take it and gladly. She cleans her face and returns to his side.

There is one more secret waiting for her, and she discovers it on the day she removes the bandages from his head and finally washes off the blood and paint that she has been leery of touching for fear of hitting a bruise or a gash and causing him additional pain.

She sits back in surprise. The mask of paint he has always taken such pains with has long ceased to frighten her; it is nothing more than a face, garish though it may be. When all the mottled red and black and white and yellow is gone and there is nothing left but brown skin, the face there is one that any other man would hardly consider a burden to display. She finds herself blushing furiously. Never has she seen a man so handsome: all straight angles of cheekbones and nose and jaw. It is a mercy that he is asleep, really, for she would not know how to explain her inability to stop staring.

-o-

“Ey len.”

She gasps in relief. “You’re awake.”

He looks around frantically.

“Safe,” she soothes. “Safe. Everyone is gone.”

“Home,” he orders, and tries to push her away.

“ _No_. I am not leaving you. Never again.”

He stops and stares. The translation is clear enough.

The light is back in his eyes. The life is back. “You’re awake,” she sighs, and rests her forehead on his bare shoulder.

He lifts her head so that he can see her eyes. His own are flooded with confusion and not a little wonder. He moves his mouth to speak but she won’t know the words of his question, so he falls back into silence, trying to read her face.

She smiles.

He says her name again and the sound of it from his mouth is like a song that warms her all the way through, that makes her feel as though she has turned to light from the top of her head to her fingertips to her feet, and she does not know if the Osage kiss but the French certainly do.

-o-

They move to the village. It is not an easy adjustment or an entirely welcome one, not for everyone—but the tears of joy on the chief’s face at the sight of his estranged son decides the matter. When he has episodes she takes him back to the riverside lodge. When conflict arises due to her pale hair, he dares anyone to reject his wife and live. It is messy, and hard, and they will never not be outcasts, not completely. It is not a perfect life, no; but at the end of each day, when they fall into the warmth of each other’s arms, they would be hard-pressed to believe it is not worth it.


End file.
